You are looking at Yahoo news in your cube, reading about some long extinct penguin that was just sighted alive. Suddenly you catch a shadow moving in the corner of your eye and speed-click off the page to your Outlook calendar. Thus the ubiquitous click-off. And your Division VP walks by…

The prevalence of this phenomenon hit me when I was making social rounds of the rows of cubicles. Often 100% of the offices I visited included a rapid click-off by the inhabitant. Using history as a model, I surmised that either some office workers browsed the Web all the time, or all office workers browsed the Web some of the time. What grief to upper management! The lost hours must be astronomical.

I am by no means claiming innocence on the matter. I have no idea how I would escape boredom and absurdity without instant Internet access in my cube. Like the Dr. Pepper ditty, I’m a clicker too.

Tags: cubicle, office humor, office internet